In wristwatches of elongated shape, using this shape to juxtapose a conventional hour-circle on the dial, in front of which an hour hand and minute hand rotate, and an additional indicator that may for example be a small seconds, a chronograph, date, moon phase indicator, etc., is already known. For example, CH Patent No. 167 847 discloses a wristwatch of this type, wherein a conventional watch movement is completed by an additional plate carrying the gear trains necessary for displaying off-centre, on the one hand, the hour and the minute, and on the other hand the second by a so-called small seconds hand. The watch movement provided in this case has an elongated shape and its output axis is at the centre of the watch.
In CH Patent No. 218 931, a timepiece is disclosed in the form of a ship's chronometer which comprises two sets of hands for indicating respectively civil time and sidereal time on two similar dials, juxtaposed in a rectangular case. A common clockwork movement directly drives the civil time display. The sidereal time display is driven from the seconds wheel of the movement, via a cascade of five intermediate wheel sets distributed in the length of the case and ensuring the proper fixed transmission ratio. Such a construction cannot be used in a watch, because of its size and the juxtaposition of two relatively large hour-circles.
In the present invention, it is sought to take advantage of the elongated shape of the case, not only to juxtapose different indicators in the direction of the largest dimension of the case and the dial, but also to distribute the mechanisms driving these indicators in the case in an advantageous manner.
In particular, in the case of an additional indicator driven step-by-step, as is the case of a day of the month indicator or a moon phase indicator, a particular problem lies in the embodiment of correction means allowing a user to correct the additional indicator without interfering with the stepping drive mechanism, which connects it to the watch movement. A conventional solution consists in incorporating a ratchet system in this drive mechanism in order to avoid damaging the mechanism when it is meshed at the moment that a correction is made. The drawback of this solution is that it requires additional elements which complicate the construction. Another solution consists in driving the additional indicator from the watch movement by means of a lever pivoting on which the correction means act by causing the lever to pivot in the same direction as the driving, which prevents one interfering with the other. CH Patent No. 519 191 discloses a construction of this type, wherein a control lever for the date indicator pivots about the centre of the watch movement, the correction means being formed by the usual control stem of the watch, which can operate as a push-button and act on the lever via an additional lever. However, this construction has a substantial drawback because the lever is of large size and covers a large part of the watch movement surface. Further, the arrangement of the control stem in the form of a stem having a push-piece function represents an extra complication.